Counsel for Kings

There’s an interesting set of instructions for the future kings of Israel in the Law of Moses.  Even though the Lord did not want the people to have a king, He allowed for it because of the people’s desires and He gave instructions for Israelite kings to Moses.  He prophesied that the people would say after their arrival in the promised land, “I will set a king over me, like as all the nations that are about me” (Deuteronomy 17:14).  This is exactly what the Israelites said to Samuel when he was getting old: “Now make us a king to judge us like all the nations” (1 Samuel 8:5).  The Lord gave them Saul to be their king and obviously many kings followed thereafter all the way down to Zedekiah.  Most of those kings were wicked, and it seems that if they had taken to heart the counsel for them in Deuteronomy 17:16-20 the Israelite history would have been very different. 

                The instructions from the Lord said that the king “shall not multiply horses to himself” and shall not “greatly multiply to himself silver and gold” (Deuteronomy 17:16-17).  In other words, the kings of Israel were not to seek to enrich themselves with the things of the world.  This seems to have been a problem with Solomon, for example, who “had forty thousand stalls of horses for his chariots” and was so rich that he made “a great throne of ivory, and overlaid it with the best gold” and even had all his “drinking vessels” and “vessels of the house” made of “pure gold” (1 Kings 4:26, 10:18, 21).  His riches eventually got the best of him along with the fact that he did “multiply wives to himself” from foreign nations who turned his heart from God (Deuteronomy 17:17).  I have to wonder how his life would have been different if he had but followed this counsel given for kings: “And it shall be, when he sitteth upon the throne of his kingdom, that he shall write him a copy of this law in a book out of that which is before the priests the Levites: And it shall be with him, and he shall read therein all the days of his life: that he may learn to fear the Lord his God, to keep all the words of this law and these statutes, to do them” (Deuteronomy 17:18-19).  If every single day he had read from the scriptures, surely the fear of the Lord would have stayed with him and he would not have turned his heart to foreign Gods.  In the same manner, I wonder at what point his father David stopped reading from the book of the law.  It’s no doubt that if he had taken this counsel to heart and studied the scriptures “all the days of his life” he would not have let himself fall for Bathsheba and commit the great wickedness that he did. 

                There is one king of Israel that seems to have followed this admonition to take seriously the book of the law as part of his reign, and he was greatly blessed for it.  When Josiah was king he commanded that the temple be repaired, and in it was found the “book of the law” was found and delivered unto Josiah.  We read that “when the king had heard the words of the book of the law, that he rent his clothes” (2 Kings 22:11).  He then spent much energy trying to follow the words of the book and did read to the people “all the words of the book of the covenant which was found in the house of the Lord” and he seems to have spent much of his energy trying to follow the words that he found in the scriptures (2 Kings 23:2).  Because of that the Lord promised him: “I will gather thee unto thy fathers, and thou shalt be gathered into thy grave in peace; and thine eyes shall not see all the evil which I will bring upon this place” (2 Kings 22:20).  He was spared the abominations of future generations that came because of the wickedness of the kings and the people, and he is one of the few kings of Israel that we look back on with admiration.

No doubt there is great application for us in this counsel to the ancient kings.  We know that each of us “are also born to be kings and queens, priests and priestesses,” (see here) and so surely the admonitions apply in great measure to us today.  We must be able to keep ourselves from getting trapped in the things and riches of the world, and we must find the time to take the scriptures and “read therein all the days of [our] life.”  Of course that alone is not enough, but if we will from them “learn to fear the Lord” and “keep all the words… to do them” then we will find the protection and blessing of the Lord that He sought to give His ancient kings.